After a reasonably successful scratch build of the Gooseberry I'm ready to tackle this labour of love.

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This is the easy bit - the decks are just flat sheets sitting on flat sheet bulkheads to give height. When I've detailed the bulkheads I'll add the hull plating but a bit more work to do before then.

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I wanted to do a more refined timber deck effect than the Gooseberry showed. The Gooseberry effort is the underlying bigger piece, the new effort sitting on top. The timber veneer is from a pack from the local art shop, thinner than the bit available for G, and planks drawn with a very fine sepia pen rather than the thicker black on the Gooseberry. Looks a bit more scale appropriate I think.

Gathering some accessories together next, and I've ordered an Eduard set for the Liberty and some L'Arsenal deck winches which are exquisite. Martin alerted me to Battlefleet Models who do these lovely resin cowl vents, which are like gold dust to merchant ship modellers. Their shape make them difficult to scratch build. I could probably use Navy railings but got this set for the Academy Titanic to have something specific to a Merchant vessel, though I'm not sure I can tell the difference, except for 5 bar railings which are probably not needed. Anyway, Titanic had a lot of railings so this should do me for a couple of ships.

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Getting some brass ladders on the masts and steam vents and ladder on the funnel a bit premature but the sort of thing that motivates me to keep going.

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The after hatch will be shown open as this is where the first torpedo struck. Survivors reported that barbed wire was thrown on deck by the first explosion, making it doubly difficult for crew to make their way forward to the boat deck. There will be a four inch gun and a Bofors on the poop deck in due course.

I spent much of Saturday gluing and taping plasticard sheet to the hull framework, starting on the flat amidships and gradually bending, gluing and taping around bow and stern.

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The masts had to come off. I kinda knew it was a mistake fixing them so early in the build, but I'm pretty sure I got the base housings wrong and need to rebuild them anyway - I think they were just an open platform and frame on Induna, not an enclosed housing.

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Lots of filling and sanding to do where glue has melted the thin sheet and especially around the bow and stern.

...and aft. The housings at the base of the masts have been discarded, pretty sure they were not enclosed as per first efforts but no clear pictures so am basing these on contemporaries. That ladder is embarrassing but fixable.

Here's a JU88 eye-view. Induna fended off a few and Hajo Herrmann flew against this convoy in KG30 (for you aircraft buffs who consider ships as targets without wheels) but unfortunately skips this episode in his memoirs.

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Amidships.

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And compared to the only wartime photo I can find of her - high in the water because it's taken before she loaded her last cargo. That's New York Harbour, with an uncle either aboard or whooping it up in Manhattan.